The present invention relates to a method for redeeming discount offers, and deals more particularly with an improvement in such methods whereby the method of redeeming discount offers causes the recipient to be identified in a system along with a record of items he or she purchased, and further resides in a method whereby point of sale redemption of discount offers are made using a distributed brochure/flyer medium which is identified using a computerized data system in which offers stored in memory are electronically referenced.
Discount offers are most often made available to users through the intermediary of paper coupons, which for example, may have printed matter awarding the bearer money off the involved purchase item, or by offering a percentage off the purchase price of the item, or even allowing the bearer to a buy one item and receive another one free. Such coupon offers are well established components of retail marketing. Coupons are issued by a manufacturer as an incentive to induce consumers to purchase that manufacturer's product. This is especially true for mass marketed products, such as food, health and beauty aids, over the counter drugs, household cleaning products, and hardware store items. Historically, most coupons are issued by national brand product manufacturers, but retail store chains, particularly grocery stores, are now using incentive coupon offers to promote store brand products that compete with the national brands. Most coupons are delivered to consumers as printed offers in newspapers and magazines, as free-standing inserts (FSI) in newspapers, as components in direct mail advertising programs, or they are given to consumers in stores, or are attached to or placed inside product packaging. Commonly, the consumer must cut out the coupons, sort them, and present the individual pieces of paper for redemption at the time of purchase. At the point of purchase, each coupon must further be checked to verify that it has not expired. Confirmation must be shown of the consumer's having actually purchased the item on the coupon, and the item purchased must be examined to be certain it is the correct size and quantity of the product. Traditionally, this was done manually, but it is now common to encode coupons with a universal product code (UPC), electronically scan them, and utilize a database file attached to the checkout register to ensure that the coupon is valid and the product purchased is eligible for a discount credit. Even with the use of electronic scanners and electronic sales registers, a cashier must still manually handle each coupon individually. Thus, the manual handling of coupons adds significantly to the cost of their use.
Coupons collected by the retailer must be sorted before they can be returned to the manufacturer for reimbursement. Some retailers perform this task but most often a professional clearing house does this for a fee. The manufacturer must pay for the promotion cost on the coupon plus a handling fee to cover the expense of sorting, counting, storing and transporting the coupons. In addition, retailers incur a cost associated with the value of the discount and the time between when the consumer receives the discount and the retailer is reimbursed by the manufacturer. Coupon redemption and reimbursement systems involving paper transfers also provide opportunities for fraud. That is, coupons can be presented for reimbursement but not presented in conjunction with the purchase of the product identified on the coupon. The manufacturer is unable to determine if a group of sorted coupons presented for reimbursement by a retailer were in actuality redeemed by consumers.
Presently, some grocery store chains are now introducing "clipless coupons" into their weekly advertising circulars. These are promotional documents are redeemed without the need to cut out a coupon. Instead, the consumer applies for and receives a card with a machine readable bar code that identifies the cardholder. The card is scanned or an identity code is keyed in at the checkout register and a discount is applied against the purchase price of any product purchased that are advertised in the circular as eligible for a discount. Among the many shortcomings associated with such systems is the need to have consumers register for a card at the store before any business can be transacted. Moreover, these cards are not configured to be used with a system which is capable of accepting a number of different card or discount flyers published by entities other than the store itself. Furthermore, redemptions taken from such offers are limited to only those consumers who apply for and receive an encoded identification card. Moreover, clipless coupon type programs utilize generic advertising circulars that are not encoded to identify a specific recipient. This is because the encoded cards utilized with such "clipless coupon systems" are not associated with the delivery of an advertising circular to an intended recipient. Such systems fall short of placing on an advertising vehicle, such as, a mailed circular or booklet, redemption identification information about the recipient of the advertising. Mailing of incentive advertising to a broad general population or a targeted demographic population is preferable to the more limited population of people who apply for an identity card at a store.
Advertising mailed to the general population is desirable because it can draw response from the broad general population or a targeted demographic population, rather than the more limited population of people who apply for an identity card. The identity of the purchaser, who received the advertising circular, as previously discussed, could then be traceable. This is important because product manufacturers place a tremendous value on statistics and market research that characterizes the people who purchase particular products. With this information, a manufacturer can more efficiently manage advertising expenditures by directing promotional advertising toward people most likely to buy a product rather that to those in the broad population who may or may not purchase the product. Ideally, if the identity of the household(s) or individual(s) who have actually purchased a particular product could be determined, incentive advertising could be sent directly to that household or individual to induce additional purchases of that product, a related product, or a competitive product. Likewise, this information would greatly help a manufacturer that is introducing a new product or a variation e.g. "extension" on an existing product by allowing the manufacturer to promote the new item directly to established customers of the original product.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to enable expeditious reimbursement of retailers for price discounts extended to consumers without the necessity of sorting, storing and transporting of paper coupons.
It is yet another object of the present invention to record and store in a database file referenced by purchaser identity or residence the purchases made by an individual and to use this database file to study purchasing habits of that person for marketing purposes.
It is another object of the invention to provide a database file of all incentive discount promotion products purchased by an individual, household or both, which database file may further include all products purchased, in addition to those for which an incentive discount was earned.
A further object of the invention is to provide incentive advertising and an electronic redemption, validation and reimbursement system that eliminates the need for individual paper coupons.
Yet still a further object of the invention is to provide a system and method of the aforementioned type wherein items offered for discount are debited and the debit amount is stored in a database file and this file is used by the store to effect reimbursement using electronic transfer of the data.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an advertising vehicle, such as, a mailed circular brochure or flyer, having identification information on the recipient, hence eliminating the need for consumers to apply for an identity card.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a discount offer flyer which can draw response from the broad general population or a targeted demographic population rather than the more limited group of people who apply for an identity card.
A still further object of the invention is to provide an advertising circular which is capable of presenting the value of any discounts issued, a list of discount eligible items purchased, and a list of all items purchased so as to be recordable in appropriate database files by utilizing the machine readable UPC bar code on each product purchased and a machine readable redemption identification indica on the advertising vehicle presented with the items purchased.
A further object of the invention is to provide an advertising flyer which significantly reduces the potential for fraud by utilizing electronic redemption and reimbursement and ties each redemption to a specific household, if not an individual.
Still a further object of the invention is to provide a combination advertising medium containing discount offers with an electronically readable redemption identification indicia.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an incentive discount promotion offer processing system that obviates the need to manually process and sort coupons after redemption.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a method of validating incentive discount promotion offers distributed to consumers by electronically comparing products actually purchased with the product indemnification effected by the identifying coding on each item.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a system by which manufacturers can expeditiously reimburse retailers for the value of incentive discounts rendered to consumers.
It is an object of the present invention to provide retailers with a database or access to a network that contains redemption information for each incentive discount promotion offer that appears in at least one advertising circular.
Another objective of the present invention is to correlate using the UPC codes of purchased products with the identity or address or both of the individual purchasing the products to enable utilization of this information for statistical and marketing purposes, such as, but not limited to, market research or the creation of highly focused and individualized consumer advertising and incentive promotions.